September 12: Tiramisu with Homemade Genoise Ladyfingers

Today is Keith's birthday, and his special request was tiramisu.  So, since tiramisu is not a cake, I decided to make the genoise ladyfingers as my Saturday Cake.

I chose to use the Genoise Ladyfingers recipe from Baking with Julia by Julia Child, based on the TV series of the same name. Genoise is the French name for "from Genoa" Italy and refers to a slightly dry, sturdy cake with no leavening other than eggs.  Genoise is traditionally used for jelly rolls, Bouche de Noel, trifle and ladyfingers because it is durable, flexible and soaks up flavors.   The eggs are beaten at room temperature.  The batter is exceedingly fluffy with a texture like whipped cream and is piped onto baking parchment.  My batter seemed to lose some fluffiness between going into the top of the pastry bag, and coming out of the end.  I marked the parchment with guide-lines to help the ladyfingers be consistently sized, but mine look more like arthritic-lady-fingers and the batter spread out as soon as I squeezed it from the bag.  I think may have been to vigorous when folding the melted butter into the batter (last step).  I baked the ladyfingers for about 5 minutes at 400º just until spongy and firm.  A few developed a golden color on an edge, but ideally they wouldn't have any golden color.  I cooled them on their parchment and went on to the tiramisu preparations.

I used the tiramisu recipe from Carmine's Family-Style Cookbook.  Carmine's restaurant is one of my favorite places to eat in New York.  They have one location at Times Square in the theatre district and another on the upper west side.  I was introduced to Carmine's by female Secret Service Special Agent from the New York field office.  We had gone through USSS training together and loved to talk about food and cooking.  Carmine's serves all of their food family-style and the tiramisu comes to the table in a BIG bowl.  It is the best tiramisu I have ever had.  Plus, they make a fantastic Speidini alla Romano appetizer (thick bread toasted with fresh mozzarella, then covered in a tangy butter sauce with capers and anchovies).  Their Chicken Marsala and Fra Diavolo are delicious.  Since we usually traveled to NYC a couple of times a year, it was easy to lure other Special Agents in to the "cult" of Carmine's.  My carmine's cookbook was a gift from the SA whom I had introduced to the Spiedidi and tiramisu.

First thing this morning, before a cup of coffee even, I made the zabaglione.  Zabaglione, or sabayon, is a custard of egg yolks, sugar and sweet wine like Marsala.  It needs to be prepared and allowed to chill for a while before assembling the tiramisu.  The zabaglione is folded into a mixture of whipped cream and mascarpone cheese.

In a baking dish, I layered ladyfingers (soaked in a mixture of cold espresso and Kahlua) with the mascarpone/zabaglione mixture then I added bittersweet chocolate shavings to the top of each layer.  I let the whole thing rest in the refrigerator for several hours and after a delicious dinner of barbecue at Smoke Belly in Buckhead, we returned home for Keith to try his tiramisu.  He loved it!  I was lucky that no one could see the malformed ladyfingers buried under all of the lovely cream!

Next Saturday: Mallorie Hinze's Prune Cake

September 7: Five-Flavor Cake

It has been Calendar Girls tech week for me so my Saturday Cake has spilled over to a Monday Cake instead.  Although, it IS a three-day weekend, so I think I can get away with it on a "tech-nicality."

Tech week is the final week in the production period of a play when all of the elements come together on stage for the first time.  For weeks, the actors have been working in rehearsals, the scenic crew has been building the set in the shop, lighting and sound crews were plotting instruments and running cable, the properties designer has been shopping for the perfect thingamajig to sit on the perfect table in that one scene, etc...  The costume designer has been shopping for the perfect costume pieces, altering them to fit, building them when an (insert name, color, texture of piece here) doesn't already exist and has finally had a short break from dress rehearsals to bake a cake.

Sign at gelateria, Greenville

A time of bringing together different elements to make a cohesive whole seemed like the right time to try the Five-Flavor Cake.  In April, I took Autumn on a college visit to Furman University and afterward, she wanted to investigate downtown Greenville.  Greenville has a charming downtown with a nice variety of shops and restaurants.  We took a break for gelato and coffee before hitting the road back to Atlanta, and that is how I first laid eyes on a Five-Flavor Cake.  I thought it was so unusual that I took a picture of the sign to keep for future reference.

About a week after the Greenville trip, Keith and I attended a sale at the estate of Mary Nell and Dante Santacroce.  Mary Nell Santacroce was an award-winning, Atlanta actress best remembered for her portrayal of Miss Daisy in Driving Miss Daisy by Atlanta playwright, Alfred Uhry.  Mary Nell Santacroce taught theatre and speech at Georgia Tech and was a longtime leader and mentor for DramaTech theatre there.  Uhry is an alumnus of Druid Hills High School where our Autumn is a senior, taking theatre class in the Alfred Uhry Theatre.  This tech week has been especially busy for our family, because Keith has begun rehearsals for Othello, which he is directing at Dramatech.

At the estate sale, along with some drama books and vintage buttons, we bought Ramblin' Chefs from Georgia Tech a recipe book published by the Georgia Tech Women's Forum in 1985.  Lo, and behold, what recipe did I find, but one for a Five-Flavor Cake!  The recipe calls for one teaspoon each of coconut, vanilla, butter, rum and lemon extracts.  It seems the Greenville cake used almond instead of butter flavoring, but I decided to follow the recipe in the Tech cookbook.  There is also a glaze added after baking that requires another teaspoon of each flavor.

The cake went together easily and the batter was very fluffy and "frosting-like" according to Keith.  That fluffiness is probably due to the use of both butter and vegetable shortening in the cake.  There was a light, cookie-like crust around the edges of the top of the pan (I was tired and slightly over-filled the bundt pan).  Those little crunchy bits were scarfed-up in a hurry by Keith and Colin.   After taking a bite of the cake, Keith said "WOW."  It tastes like pound cake with a little something extra and it is superbly moist from the glaze.

Encore!  Encore!

Next week:  Lady Fingers for Tiramisu

August 29: WI Centenary Celebration Cake

2015 is the one hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Women's Institute in Britain.  The WI emerged after the women's suffrage movement as a reaction to the changing role of women both inside and outside the home.  The WI emphasized food and cooking; home economics for the nascent 20th century.  With the onset of the first World War, the emphasis of the WI expanded to encourage women in home sewing, growing food gardens, and canning.  The organization has chapters all over Great Britain with a traditional motto of "for home and country."  After the wars of the first half of the century, the WI continued to model home economics, but also emerged as a charitable service organization.  The modern motto of the WI is "Inspiring Women" and the inspiring story of some of the inspiring women is the reason for my cake choice this week.

In the late 1990's, members of the Knapely, England WI posed-for and published a pin-up calendar to raise money for the relatives' room in the cancer wing of a local hospital.  The effort was dear to the hearts of the WI chapter due to the loss of a member's husband to Leukemia.  The middle-aged women caused a stir (and much global press) by posing nude and raised enough money to support an entire wing of the hospital.  These women inspired a feature film, Calendar Girls, starring Helen Mirren in 2003.

A play of the same name was developed by the screenwriter and has been running in London.  The southeast US premiere of Calendar Girls opens in one week at  Georgia Ensemble Theatre with costumes designed by yours truly.  It has been a busy and sleep-deprived week for me with our first dress rehearsal taking place tonight.  Ticket sales have been brisk and the run has already been extended.

While the message of the play is poignant, the show is hilarious and heartwarming.  It even contains more than a few jokes related to baked goods.  In one scene, the winner of a Victoria Sponge baking contest is asked the secret to her baking success, she claims to follow her mother's baking advice:  "Line the bowl with butter... Always use a warm spoon... And if it's a special event, get it from Marks and Spencers."

In celebration of the anniversary of the WI and my show, I made the Centenary Celebration Cake from the WI Cookbook - The First 100 Years.  The recipe won a contest in 2014 to be the cake presented at the 100th Annual General Meeting earlier this year.  After looking up the American equivalent to "gas mark 3" for the baking temperature, I was ready to join the WI ladies in their celebration.

It is a very rich cake with deceptively simple appearance.  It contains pounds of fruit, citrus zest, ground almonds and rum.  There are so many currants inside (14 ounces!) that it is more fruit than cake.  Everyone at our house would probably have chosen another cake to celebrate a big anniversary; the cake is fruitcake-like without being cloying, but is not our favorite.  My Victoria Sponge (January 17) was more more popular with my audience.


Honestly, I am not sure how I will manage to bake a cake this coming weekend with my ten-out-of-twelve (hours) rehearsal on Saturday.  The nearest Marks and Spencer is in England, so I will have to find the time to bake!

Next Saturday: Five Flavor Cake

August 22: Virginia Hall's Date Cake

As I have been working non-stop on costumes for Calendar Girls, I wanted to bake a simple cake this week.  I chose Virginia Hall's Date Cake prepared in a tube pan with a simple glaze, instead of a layer cake with frosting.

The recipe is from Our Favorites, a cookbook published by the Woman's Society of Christian Service, East Lake Methodist Church in 1958.  East Lake is a section of Atlanta which is most notable for the East Lake Golf Club where Bobby Jones starting playing as a young boy.  East Lake contains many lovely homes some dating back as far as the 19th century.  The neighborhood is now a thriving, family-friendly, in-town enclave.

Similar to the Opti-Mrs cookbook I used for the Mocha Loaf Cake (July 25), this cookbook was locally published and contains advertisements from area businesses, long-since shuttered.  It also contains occasional helpful hints and poems.  One such poem appears on the same page as the Date Cake recipe;

Do you wish the world were better?
let me tell you what to do;
Set a watch upon your actions,
Keep them always straight and true;
Rid your mind of selfish motives,
Let your thoughts be clear and high,
You can make a little Eden,
Of the sphere you occupy. 

-- Ellis Wheeler Wilcox

Good advice on the same page as a good recipe.  Plus, later in the chapter on cakes is a "Fool-Proof Caramel Frosting" recipe that I might need to consult for a final attempt at a caramel cake in the coming months.

The date cake turned out very well.  it is made with chopped dates, chopped pecans, orange juice, zest, and buttermilk.  The flavors are well balanced, and no one component overwhelms.   I will need to use more flour to dredge the dates and nuts next time, because they sank a little in the batter.  The buttermilk makes this cake very moist.  In addition, a glaze of sugar, orange juice and zest is drizzled over the cake while it is still warm.

Right now, the sphere I occupy is full of costumes (more on that in my next post), so the Eden I make will have to be very little indeed...

Next Saturday: The Women's Institute Centenary Celebration Cake

August 15: Seven Layer Cake

Seven Layer Bars...  Seven Layer Dip...  Seven Layer Cake...
Why the cook's attraction to the number seven?  Is it magical?  Biblical?

Over the years, I had seen seven-layer cakes at restaurants and bakeries but I had never eaten any. Recipes for the cake appear often in cookbooks of Eastern European specialties and Passover specialties.  I remember seeing a loaf-shaped, seven-layer cake in the Hickory Farms catalogs that were mailed to my grandparents every year.  The thin layers of cake with thin layers of chocolate between the layers always looked appealing.

An efficient, modern kitchen

Appealing is also a great descriptor for the cookbook from which I plucked this recipe.  The Culinary Arts Institute Encyclopedic Cookbook, Copyright 1950, Edited by Ruth Berolzheimer has 974 pages of recipes and kitchen advice arranged with hundreds of photos illustrating same.  It has tabbed pages, like an encyclopedia, so that you can skip to the section you need.  There is even a tabbed section on "Your Refrigerator Desserts" and one for "Your Quick Dinners for the Woman in a Hurry."  There are recipes involving fillings to put into "bologna cups;"  the cup that forms when a piece of bologna curls up when heated in a frying pan.  It also contains the following poetic introduction:

"The personality of a cookbook is as apparent as it is important.  It is composed of known and stable ingredients with unknown and elusive ones to make a mixture as familiar, friendly and exhilarating as a pine woods on a summer morn."

Are we just talking about a cookbook here?  Or something more profound?

The Seven Layer Cake recipe calls for seven eggs (evidently, each layer needs its own), powdered sugar, and only one cup of flour.  The frosting uses three more eggs and is cooked in a double boiler.  Overall, the frosting  turned out very nicely.  It has the consistency, smooth but soft enough to be self-leveling, that I think my caramel frosting ought to have.

I don't own seven identical 8" cake pans, so I invested $7 at the dollar store for a set of pans.  The layers turned out very evenly by using a disher (levered scoop) to measure an even amount into each pan.  The cake layers were flexible and easy to remove from the pan due to the highly "eggy" batter. Not surprisingly, the cake did taste a little eggy and had a bouncy spongy texture, a little sturdier than a regular sponge cake.  This texture was a drawback to the cake according to everyone in our household.

Layering the cake with the frosting was not difficult due to the smooth texture of the frosting.  No magic here.  It just required the patience of Job to keep the layers from slipping out of place as the chocolate "set."

Next Saturday:  Date Cake

August 8: Orange Cake

I am glad that I chose a simple, straightforward cake this weekend.  Autumn and Colin start back to school on Monday and there were end-of-summer haircuts and supply-shopping trips to accomplish.  In addition, I had production meetings about the play for which I am designing costumes, Calendar Girls at Georgia Ensemble Theatre.  The show opens on September 10th and this weekend I made my costume presentations for approval of my renderings.  Now, I can hit the ground running on my designs.  It is set at the turn of the millennium, so I will be able to shop-and-alter rather than build most of the costumes.

This recipe is from my folder of magazine clippings; it was published in the January 2004 issue of Gourmet in a feature about sour cream, Culture Club.  The cake is a single-layer, square cake without frosting.  It is flavored with fresh-squeezed orange juice and orange zest.

The texture is absolutely perfect, due to the sour cream, no doubt.  It is moist and not "crumby."  It's a delicious cake, but its delicate orange flavor almost cries out for a glaze or frosting.  The family was unanimous is wishing it was, to quote Colin, "oranigier."  I am not sure if it was the fact that oranges are off-season and had come from South America or if the cake is supposed to have a very subtle taste.  I will try the recipe again, adding more orange zest and maybe I'll cheat a little by adding a spoonful of concentrated orange juice to the fresh juice.

Next Saturday:  Seven Layer Cake

August 1: Caramel Cake III, The Revenge of Caramel Cake

I had originally planned to make a cake called "Hat-in-the-Ring" cake from Betty Talmadge's Lovejoy Plantation Cookbook for this weekend.  My mother was friends with Betty Talmadge back in the late 1970's and 1980's. The book is full of great recipes and menus for entertaining; it includes instructions on roasting a pig and making Brunswick Stew for a crowd of 100+.  Betty spent a lot of time entertaining at Lovejoy Plantation as the wife of the governor and U.S. Senator, Herman Talmadge.  Lovejoy Plantation was located in the same area as the fictional Tara in Margaret Mitchell's Gone With The Wind, and Betty bought the facade of Tara used for the movie of GWTW and later donated it to the Margaret Mitchell Museum here in Atlanta.

The cake recipe is one that I had chosen back in January.  As I find recipes, I place an index card with the name of the recipe into an envelope and then choose from that envelope each week.  I thought that a "Hat -in-the-Ring" cake would be a perfect choice for this week of the first Republican debate since so many Republicans have thrown their "hats into the ring."  However, when I looked over the recipe this week, I noticed that it was Betty's own version of a Lane Cake - with raisins, bourbon, and pecans, just like I recently made on July 19.


What to do?


Luckily, during our trip last week to scout-out colleges, I found a great cookbook, Rumford Complete Cook Book (1941), at an antique store in Thomasville, North Carolina.  Thomasville is the birthplace of Thomasville Furniture and they have a large chair sculpture (about two stories tall) right in the middle of downtown.

The cookbook was formerly owned by Mrs. William Bowman of Greensboro, North Carolina.  It was published by the Rumford Chemical Works of Rumford, Rhode Island, a manufacturer of baking powder.  Rumford chemical issued pamphlets with recipes and cooking tips starting in the 1850's.  They published those recipes in a Complete Cook Book starting in 1908.

There are many pages in the cookbook which got much use and attention from Mrs. Bowman.  Inside, there are newspaper clippings of recipes "to stretch meat points" during the war years.  The best parts of the book are the recipes that she wrote on the end papers and inside covers of the book.  One, for her gingerbread, seemed to get the most use, but there are great-looking ones for ice box rolls, yeast bread, and apple sauce cake.

One recipe, that Mrs. Bowman clipped from the newspaper and cellophane-taped to the back cover was for a caramel cake.  It is a recipe for Easy Mix Cake and Caramel Frosting from Mary Lee Taylor. Mrs. Taylor (a pseudonym for an advertising copywriter named Erma Proetz) had a radio program on NBC called "Story of the Week" which always contained a "Recipe of the Week" sponsored by Pet Milk.  Mrs. Taylor was billed as a "home economist" and "nutritionist" for Pet Milk.  Sounds almost like the plot of the movie, Christmas in Connecticut, to me.  This recipe was originally broadcast on March 13, 1948.

The recipe, as written, is for a single layer cake and contains Pet Milk, of course.  I multiplied the recipe and made mine in three layers in my quest for a perfect caramel layer cake.  I used Pet Milk and stuck to the rest of the recipe.  A recipe by an ad copywriter?  Wow, it shows.  The proportion of baking powder to flour was alarmingly high.  The instructions to mix all the dry ingredients with the wet ingredients and shortening all at once then add the eggs is contrary to everything I know about assembling a cake.  The cake was full of large air bubble pockets, and rose too quickly, caused by the baking powder and by not creaming the fat and sugar together, first.  The texture was very fragile with a large crumb and it fell apart removing it from the pan.  Dreadful!

The ugliest slice of cake.  Ever.

The frosting, on the other hand, turned out pretty well.  It has a smooth texture, not gritty and a very light color.  It doesn't have a strong enough flavor of burnt sugar and it is exceedingly sweet.  But, all caramel frostings are super sweet, to me.  I looked back at the clipping taped to the book cover and noticed that Mrs. Bowman had taped  it on top of her handwritten recipe for chocolate cake filling, so I am now thinking that she saved this recipe for the frosting, not the crazy cake.

My quest for a successful caramel cake recipe must continue, although I am not sure how much more effort I have the fortitude to invest; I feel like I am throwing good sugar after bad.  Maybe just one more attempt at a caramel cake?

So (without claiming to be a nutritionist or home economist) that is my "Story of the Week."


Next Saturday: Orange Cake